


["i love you"]

by threadoflife



Series: sherlock ficlets [11]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 17:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9196334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threadoflife/pseuds/threadoflife
Summary: Sherlock says, “I love you,” for the first time in his life and the ground does not open up and swallow him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> quick thing scribbled for that beautiful picture
> 
> http://wssh-watson.tumblr.com/post/155315770052/happierstill-alessiapelonzi-grief-i-did

John is the one who saves him, in the end.

Sherlock says it, and he says it before John. He says it before John, and he says it for John. “I love you” stumbles out, raw, vulnerable, do the letters leave blood on his lips? His heart is bleeding out. (Metaphorically.) (Not literally this time.)

(He prefers the literal kind. Metaphorical is much too messy, and though intangible and incurable, still omnipresent and omnipotent. Obliterating.) (How do people love without leaving blood behind everywhere they go? Sherlock’s trail is endless.)

They’re foreign in their intimacy, but so true. Nothing has ever been truer, not mathematics, nor any other science. Sherlock is awash in them, unmoving, his insides quivering all over like they want him to shake apart from the inside. He wants to. Maybe if he’ll dissolve he doesn’t have to face the consequences.

Another error: a human error, made of insecurity.

Because Sherlock says, “I love you,” before John and for John and to John, and John is there. Stays there. Stays where he is, and keeps looking at Sherlock as if Sherlock hasn’t just bared his all his ugly secrets. As if he hasn’t just–metaphorically–cut the lump of pounding flesh from his chest and handed it to John, entrails and nerves and blood and all.

Sherlock says it, and John is there despite it and catches him when he falls. John saves the life: he takes Sherlock’s pitiful humanity in his calm, capable hands, and cups his fingers and his palms around it in a circle as if it were precious, something to protect.

Sherlock says it, and John is there, and John says, “I know,” after what can’t possibly be but must be an eternity, and John, his live oxymoron, instead of turning and fleeing–always so brave in the face of danger, but never this kind of danger, never this–John stays, looks at Sherlock while Sherlock is stripped to his basest and nudest of selves, and says, “I know,” as if it’s all right.

When John’s arms close around him in a shockingly close manner, Sherlock responds instinctually: he folds himself around John like paper–that’s how thin he feels–and closes his eyes.

John doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to say it. He’s said it all along, in every action and glance and minute they had together. Sherlock understands, finally.

And he shows John he does, and when he does, John is there and catches him, as if he understands him too.

Sherlock says, “I love you,” for the first time in his life and the ground does not open up and swallow him. Instead, there is John Watson, who does not need to catch him, because he does not fall. He has fallen long ago.

There is John Watson who saves him in the end. But first there was John Watson who saved him from the start, and it is because of him that Sherlock is not afraid to fall once more.


End file.
